Mexican Batman, Britain’s Downfall, Mr Bean’s Comeback & Jimmy Carr - Rabbit Hole #5 - #1143

A Lagos de Moreno vigilante has been taping alleged motorcycle thieves to lamp posts, with signs calling them thieves. Police treat the restrained people as victims while hunting whoever is behind it. A real-life Mexican Batman leaving the bike as evidence? People have dubbed him Duct Tape Man.

It’s oddly gentle by Mexican crime-story standards. Don’t nick motorcycles: there’s your public-service message. Though leaving the motorbike beside them does feel like the bit where somebody cuts them loose and they immediately ride away.

In Britain, someone left a tracked bike near a London police base, knew where it had gone, and was told nothing could be done. Only after it hit the papers did police investigate. So I can see how Duct Tape Man arrives.

The last serious crime I committed was probably tax avoidance. It got so noisy David Cameron interrupted a G20 summit to discuss my tax affairs, which is a reliable warning light.

Avoidance is legal; evasion is where you get prison. Gary Stevenson argues for taxing wealth rather than labour: a two percent levy on very high wealth could raise billions, though capital and investment may simply leave.

Britain has to compete. Make the country attractive, fix energy costs, and be ambitious. France built nuclear capacity at astonishing speed; if we managed remotely that, we’d be flying.

So the national slogan is: weaker than the dollar. A beautiful mission statement.

We’ve had so many prime ministers it feels like taking a ticket at a deli. I’d be Prime Minister for six months, put up a sign saying I’ll be back shortly, and that would cover the tenure.

Victorian slang gave us tickety-boo for everything’s fine, butter upon bacon for too much of a good thing, and mafficking for getting wildly rowdy in the street.

Language is wonderful because nobody runs it from headquarters. Words emerge, mutate, and vanish. English is almost an anarchist system; good solutions often grow upward rather than being imposed from above.

I’m suspicious of new vocabulary. Big thoughts work best in small words. If revolutionaries could mobilise people around liberty and fraternity, you don’t need jargon to sell anything.

Comedy is rhythm, word choice, and getting an image into somebody else’s mind. Sometimes a joke sits in everyone’s palm: calling a stepdad a motherfucker, or realising nobody could warn Trump because shouting “Donald Duck” sounds ridiculous.

Patterns land even when we know the trick: A-B-B-A, or the rule of three. Churchill’s famous line originally had four items, including toil, but memory discarded one. Three has a strange grip on us.

Darwin walked circuits when stuck; Nolan diagrammed Inception; Rowling used spreadsheets. Don’t only think with your skull. Use your feet, hands, and mouth. Einstein thanked the friend he talked things through with.

Relationships have a reservoir of goodwill. Build shared memories early, then bad days draw on that reserve. An old friend can survive more because there’s history in the bank.

That can sound transactional. If a mate has a flat tyre, roadside assistance solves the mechanical problem, but not the real request: “Will you come and be with me?” Friendship needs time and loyalty.

Friendship reveals itself on terrible days. Cancellation was a useful filter: fewer friends, better friends. James Corden rang nightly while he was busy on Broadway, even after I insisted I was fine. You remember who called.

Forget status, money, and becoming the average of five people. I want people who make me feel alive. A broke poet might do that better than a billionaire who leaves me dead behind the eyes.

Britain’s illness is cynicism; America’s is bullshit. I’d rather get a cheerful “have a nice day” than a sincere instruction to fuck off. In Britain, warmth takes a three-year feasibility study.

I’m chasing one excellent sentence, then another. A cliché is somebody else’s discarded thought. If you can search a line and find it everywhere, it probably isn’t yours.

For stand-up, audiences tell me the truth. Usually a dead premise stays dead; rewrites rarely resurrect it. I want jokes that work every time, regardless of delivery: proper triple-A ones.

Average work will become cheap with AI, while brilliant work gets pricier. Great writing needs risk, and systems trained on averages tend toward safety. You can feel conviction in work; don’t merely ask a robot to assemble words.

AI may help people lacking shared facts: a brief chatbot exchange reportedly reduced conspiracy beliefs. But the deeper issue is collapsed institutional trust, and this race feels like many labs sprinting at once.

I bought a deliberately limited phone because screens invade everything. People sit in saunas with AirPods. Mate, that is exactly when you should be alone with your thoughts. Less, less, less.

Boredom is undervalued serenity. A train journey or cabin without Wi-Fi is now luxury. For children, removing social media isn’t enough; they need real freedom and outdoor play.

Don’t assume the phone is the original disease. Chesterton’s fence applies: remove it without understanding it and someone may swap scrolling for porn, bacon, or something else. The device may be a bad solution to a deeper problem.

We’ve made mental-health problems private failures when society may be badly arranged for flourishing. Start with sleep, food, movement, nature, friends—but those are hardest while you’re spiralling.

A big review found dance therapy surprisingly effective: movement, music, and other people, rather than exercising alone in headphones. We’ve lost steps, handwork, and proper talk.

Friction is good. TikTok is nearly frictionless and evaporates from memory; books demand effort and give more back. Sport, art, friendship: the best parts of life often ask something of you.

Stoner isn’t a heroic quest. It’s a man who discovers books, marries badly, and lives through little cuts and quiet compromises. The question is: what did you expect?

I read Stoner more kindly. He went from working land as a boy to teaching literature for decades. Compared with the life expected of him, that’s extraordinary. Happiness may be reality minus expectation.

Good conversation leaves room for unfinished ideas. Ask, “What do you mean?” or “Say more,” then use silence. The tiny snag in an argument is often where the next insight hides.

People want perfection before action. Better to begin messily. Publish the writing, record the conversation, stand before an audience. You don’t become good by preparing forever.

We’ve already made Earth feel like another planet: hot showers, beds, toilets, air-conditioning. I’m happy to keep going, maybe to one hundred and fifty. Why is a longer human life automatically mad?

Death is the certainty, and making peace with it gives life urgency. You can’t control duration, but you can shape depth. Four thousand weeks is enough to ask what you’ll do with them.

We close where men inevitably end up: the Romans. Then the impossible Prime Minister question. I appreciate you all—give it to Caesar, boys. Thank you for joining us.